Hiraga Gennai

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Hiraga Gennai was a Japanese polymath and rōnin of the Edo period. He was a pharmacologist, student of Rangaku, author, painter and inventor well known for his Erekiteru, Kandankei and Kakanpu. Gennai

1845 A Portrait of Kyūkei Hiraga (1729–80) by Momuō Kimura

Portrait of Hiraga Gennai by Nakamaru Seijuro [ja]

The Elekiter (replica) exhibited in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan.

Gennai (Shido) ware sake bottle with design of scholars in garden, earthenware with clear glaze and colored enamels. Edo period, 18th century

Rangaku

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Rangaku, and by extension Yōgaku, is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicin

Hiraga Gennai

…Hiraga Gennai (平賀源内; born c.1729; died 1779 or 1780) was a Japanese polymath and rōnin of the Edo period. He was a pharmacologist, student of Rangaku, author, painter and inventor well known for his Erekiteru (electrostatic generator), Kandankei (thermometer) and Kakanpu (asbestos cloth). Gennai…

A meeting of Japan, China, and the West, Shiba Kōkan, late 18th century

Replica of an East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company/United East Indies Company (VOC)

Account of Foreign Countries (増補華夷通商考, Zōho Kaitsū Shōkō), Nishikawa Joken, 1708. Tokyo National Museum

Painting by Kawahara Keiga: Arrival of a Dutch Ship. Philipp Franz von Siebold at Dejima with his Japanese wife Otaki and their baby daughter Ine observing a VOC ship in Nagasaki Bay using a telescope